Season 13 discussion & Warlock PvP Guide.

Season 13 Discussion

Welcome to the Official Season 13 Discussion thread. Feel free to discuss about anything related to Warlock PvP.
Below you can find a Warlock PvP Guide written by me, containing all the information you'll have to know to get started.

If you are not interested in reading the guide and want to skip to the discussion, you can click HERE.

A Warlock PvP Guide

READ:Currently the guide is still 5.2 due pure lazyness on my part. Will be updated for 5.4

I. Introduction

Welcome to this warlock PvP guide for Mist of Pandaria patch 5.2. Here you'll be learn everything you'll need to know about being a warlock in a Player versus Player environment.
While this guide will mainly be covering the basics to get started, even as a more experience player you might find some useful information here.
Feel free to discuss below and contribute to improve this guide.

II. Table of Content

I. Introduction

II. Table of Content

III. An overview of the 3 specializations

IV. Talents

V. Glyphs

VI. Stats

VII. Gems

VIII. Enchants

IX. Professions

X. Resources

XI. Spells

XII. Pets

XIII. Useful macros and addons

III. An overview of the 3 specializations

Affliction

Affliction is the shadow based spec based around spreading damage over time effects, corrupting your enemies and having them suffer in agony. Haunting people to take them into your malefic grasp or swapping souls to make another suffer, it's what you enjoy. You don't blow up your enemies, you make them suffer, giving them a slow and painful death. By using the power of souls you can empowered your abilities to gain an advantage over your opponents.

Demonology

As the name says, this specialization is based around demons. You summon demons from the nether, enslaving them to your will and forcing them to do your filthy jobs. From controlling a fel- or wrathguard to even summoning an army of imps, you are a master of demons. And as being a master, by building up demonic fury, you gain the power to metamorph into a demon yourself, giving you several new demonic abilities as well as improving your damaging abilities.

Destruction

"Some people just want to see the world burn", that's destruction for you. You control the power of fire. From incinerating everything on your path to turning the rain into fire, wreaking havoc is your thing. During combat you collect Burning Embers bits which will eventually ignite you. With the Burning Embers you have collected, you can use some of your stronger abilities. From completely obliterating someone with a chaos bolt, tapping a Burning Ember to heal yourself or summoning the Flames of Xoroth to resurrect your demon. How you use them is up to you.

IV. Talents

What would a player be without his talents? Not much, so let's see what talents we got, the pros and cons, and which ones you'll likely be using.

Conclusion
You want to use Dark Regeneration because it functions as an extra defensive cooldown against burst damage. While sustained healing/shielding is nice as well, burst damage is a lot deadlier than sustained damage.

Conclusion
All 3 choices are perfectly viable. Which one you use highly depends on your play style, your arena team composition and the opponents you are meeting. As for example, when playing with a rogue, you want to avoid using Shadowfury so you don't mess up with diminishing returns or when playing against a caster team you want to avoid using Howl of Terror due it's short range.

After the shield fades, 50% of the damage prevented is dealt over 8 seconds.

Conclusion
Unless playing with Grimoire of Sacrifice, you should avoid using Soul Link to avoid the risk of dying because of your pet. When using a pet, Sacrificial Pact will be the better choice and when not using a pet, the better choice will go to Dark Bargain. However, both are very viable so feel free to use the other one if you prefer that.

Conclusion
Due the ridiculous health cost of Burning Rush, it's not a viable choice. For ranked PvP, Blood Horror is the superior choice against melee teams while Unbound Will is the way to go for everything else.
For non-ranked PvP, both are good choices. If you prefer additional defense against melee, use Blood Horror. If you prefer a second PvP-trinket, go with Unbound Will.

Unable to use pet abilities while crowd controlled nor being able to deal damage aside from damage over time effects.

The damage buff does not include Damage over Time effects.

Reduced demonic fury due the lack of a pet.(Demonology only)

Conclusion
While Grimoire of Service gives you a bit more burst, due the lack of control of the second pet people tend to stay away from it. Aside from a temporarily increase in demonic fury generation for Demonology, it brings very little to the table and therefore you should avoid using it.

Grimoire of Sacrifice is the preferred choice for Destruction since it improves cleave potential, which is one of Destruction's strengths, and the passive healing adds nicely to the amount of selfhealing destruction already has. As for Affliction, the damage from your Damage over Time effects is not increased and therefore not worth it. Neither is it worth it for Demonology for the same reason as Affliction and the fact that you cripple your demonic fury generation.

Grimoire of Supremacy is considered as the best choice for both Affliction as Demonology. The reason for this is simple, the other 2 choices have too many cons for these 2 specializations. And as Demonology you want to use the Wrathguard for Mortal Cleave anyway.

Increases the area of your damaging and curse applying Area of Effect spells by 500%. ( = +125% radius.)

Con

You can break crowd control by accident.

Conclusion
Because of how little damage Archimondes Vengeance reflects and the passive being disabled while the active is on cooldown, it's rather useless for PvP and should therefore be avoided.
The ability to cast while moving is extremely helpful for both Affliction and Destruction due how dependent they are on hard casting spells. Take this talent as Affliction and as Destruction.
For Demonology, the obvious choice is Mannoroth's Fury because most of your spells are instant, and it allows you to hit multiple targets with your superior Area of Effect spells such as Chaos Wave. If you are Destruction and required to use a lot of Area of Effect spells, such as in Rated Battlegrounds, Mannoroth's Fury is also a valid choice.

V. Glyphs

By now you should have an idea of which talents to use, but being talented is not enough, you'll need some glyphs as well. Let's take a look at what glyphs you'll be using for each specialization.

Provides damage reduction against all damage done by players, their pets, minions and guardians. PvP Resilience is your main source of damage mitigation and is therefore the most important stat. You start with base amount of 40% and additional PvP resilience will increase this amount, resulting in less damage taken from other players.
For more information about PvP Resilience, click here.

Spell Hit (6%)

The Spell Hit cap of 6% will eliminate the chance for any special ability to miss against other players. To reach the Spell Hit cap, the sum of your Expertise rating and Hit rating has to be 2040. You should try to be as close to this number as possible without going under it as missing 1 single spell can change the whole game.

PvP Power

Increases all damage done to players and their pets or minions. Since it scales better than Intellect, this is your main offensive stat.
For more information about PvP Power, click [URL="http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/984349-Mists-PVP-Power-and-Resilience-Guide"]here.

Because Mastery grants a flat damage increase for all 3 specializations, it is considered as the best secondary stat for all 3 specializations.

Haste

Reduces cast time, which will make it easier to get spells off without getting interrupted, lowers the GCD, and can give extra ticks on Damage over Time effects. Also, thanks to Chaotic Energy, Haste increases Mana regeneration for Destruction Warlocks.

Haste is considered to be the second best secondary stat for both Affliction and Demonology as it is more reliable than Crit. Also, for Demonology Haste will slightly increases your demonic fury generation due faster Corruption ticks.

Crit is considered to be the second best secondary stat for Destruction since it will slightly increase the damage of Chaos Bolt and Burning Ember bit generating abilities will grant double the amount of Burning Ember bits on a Critical Hit.

VII. Gems

In that fancy PvP gear you got there will likely be several gem sockets. Putting the right gems into the right sockets is a key to success.

If the socket bonus is PvP Resilience or PvP power, use Vivid Wild Jade. If the socket bonus is something different, you should ignore it and use Mystic Sun's Radiance instead. Don't gem for Hit rating as you can get the cap by reforging your gear.

Tailoring: Offers a 2000 Intellect proc for 15 seconds every 60 seconds and the use of Embersilk Nets.

Optional

Alchemy: Offers 320 extra Intellect.

Enchanting: Offers 320 extra Intellect.

Inscription: Offers 320 extra Intellect.

Leatherworking: Offers 320 extra Intellect.

X. Resources

As we all know, using a spell ain't free, they cost resources. Knowing how to use those resources is a key to success.

All 3 specializations: Mana

This is the primary resource of all 3 specializations. Every single spell that doesn't have a secondary resource cost will cost Mana.

Demonology and Affliction passively generate 3.2k Mana per second and can use Life Tap to transfer 15% of their maximum health into Mana.

Destruction on the other hand has no access to Life Tap and is therefore fully dependent on its passive Mana regeneration. Because of this, Destruction is given Chaotic Energy which increased your Mana regeneration with 625% and makes your Spell Haste also increase your Mana regeneration. Fully geared, you'll have roughly 24k Mana regeneration per second.

Affliction: Soul Shards

This is Affliction's secondary resource and is used for the following spells:

Out of combat Soul Shards regenerate at a rate of 1 Soul Shard per 20 seconds.
In combat you can use Drain Soul to generate Soul Shards. Every 2 ticks of Drain Soul will generate 1 Soul Shard, while killing your enemy while channeling Drain Soul will instantly generate 4 shards (Unlike 3 as the tooltip says).
In addition to that, Corruption has a 5% chance to proc Nightfall, granting you 1 Soul Shard.

Demonology: Demonic Fury

This is Demonology's secondary resource and is used to stay in Metamorphosis. While in Metamorphosis, all your spells that normally cost Mana will cost Demonic Fury.

Out of combat, your Demonic Fury will regenerate/degenerate to 200 at a rate of 10 Demonic Fury per second.
In combat, you can generate Demonic Fury with the following:

Drain Soul: Your finisher / Soul Shard generator. Use on targets afflicted by Unstable Affliction, Corruption and Agony ( Not necessary if target will die regardless of DoTs) that are at or below 20% health, or use to regenerate Soul Shards at a rate of 1 Soul Shards per 2 ticks.

Dark Soul: Misery: This is your main offensive cooldown. After activation, use Soulburn: Soul Swap to spread your Damage over Time effects with increased Haste to as many targets as possible. If you have sufficient Soul Shards after spreading your DoTs, apply Haunt on the target of your desire and start channeling Malefic Grasp or Drain Soul for a ton of damage.

Demonology

Damage - Caster Form

Corruption: Your highest priority cast, keep this up on everyone to build up Demonic Fury.

Fel Flame: Use this to deal damage, generate Demonic Fury and to keep Corruption up when you are unable to cast anything else.

Hand of Guldan: Use this spell to deal damage and apply Shadowflame. Try to hit as many targets as possible for maximum Demonic Fury generation and damage, and try to keep at least 1 charge of still spell ready in case you need to burst with Chaos Wave.

Hellfire: Use when you can hit a large amount of targets (5+) for massive Demonic Fury generation, or to reveal stealth/invisible targets.

Imp Swarm: Use when you need extra damage and more Demonic Fury generation.

Shadow Bolt: Your main filler spell, use when you are certain you won't get interrupted and don't have Molten Core up.

Soul Fire: Your secondary filler spell, use when you are certain you won't get interrupt and have Molten Core up.

Chaos Wave: This is your main nuke, use this when you have both charges available. This ability is best used in combination with Dark Soul and/or offensive Trinkets. Try to hit as many targets as possible for maximum damage and more Demonic Fury generation from Shadowflame.

Carrion Swarm: This is one of the most interesting abilities you have. Use this for extra damage, to interrupt a spell, to knock someone off an edge or to bring someone out of position. Be warned that Carrion Swarm can hit multiple targets.

Doom: Spread this on as many targets as possible for extra damage and to spawn Wild imps on Critical Hits. Stop using Doom if it's being decursed before it can deal damage.

Touch of Chaos: Use this to deal quick single target damage when you have sufficient Demonic Fury. Best used in combination Dark Soul and/or offensive Trinkets.

Demonic Leap: You leap a small distance in the direction you are moving. Use this ability to create a gap or to properly position yourself. Note that you can also leap backwards.

Demonic Rebirth: If your current demon dies, you can instantly Summon a new Demon. Use this after your pet has been killed and you want a new one.

Metamorphosis: Summon Pet: While in Metamorphosis you can instantly Summon a Demon for 200 Demonic Fury, however, you'll be unable to Summon a new Demon for the next minute.

Nether Plating: While in Metamorphosis you have 2.5 times as much armor and the duration of stuns and snares on you is reduced by 35%. Activating Metamorphosis on a good time will result in avoiding a lot of physical damage and getting early out of stuns

Chaos Bolt: This is your main nuke. Use when you have sufficient Burning Embers, best used when you have 3 Backdraft charges in combination with Dark Soul and/or offensive Trinkets.

Conflagrate: Use this to deal a decent amount of damage, to generate Burning Ember bits, to apply a 50% snare and to generate 3 Backdraft charges. Try to always have 1 charge available for when you need extra burst damage.

Fel Flame: Use this to deal damage, generate Burning Ember bits and to keep Immolate up when you are unable to cast anything else.

Immolate: Spread this to every target for extra damage and to generate Burning Ember bits.

Incinerate: This is your main filler spell, use this generate Burning Ember bits and to deal damage when you have a Backlash proc or Backdraft charges.

Rain of Fire: Use this to deal damage to multiple targets and to generate Burning Ember bits, or use to reveal stealth/invisible targets.

Shadowburn: This is your finisher, use this whenever a target is at 20% health or less to try finishing them off which will generate 2 Burning Embers.

Utility

Ember Tap: Use this to heal yourself, amount of healing depends on how much Mastery you have.

Havoc: Casting Havoc on a target will grant you 3 charges of Havoc. At the cost of 3 charges, your next Chaos Bolt will hit the target with Havoc as well. At the cost of 1 charge, any single target abilitypell will hit the target with Havoc as well. This includes abilities such as Fear and Mortal Coil.

Dark Soul

Dark Soul: Instability: This is your main offensive cooldown. After activation try to cast as many Chaos Bolts as possible. Due the 30% extra Crit, you'll see a big boost in its damage. If you are unable to cast Chaos Bolt, cast as many other spells as possible for extra damage and Burning Ember bit generation.

All 3 specializations

Defensive Cooldowns

Unending Resolve: Activating this ability will reduce all damage you take by 40% and make you immune to silences and interrupts. Use this ability when under heavy fire, preferred when the enemy is using offensive cooldowns, and you can't escape with Demonic Circle: Teleport or Demonic Gateway. You can also use this ability offensive to have a better chance at landing an important spell, but it is suggested to use Unending Resolve as a defensive cooldown.

Twilight Ward: With the Warlock 4set PvP bonus, Twilight Ward absorbs damage from all magical schools. Try to use Twilight Ward just before a hard Hitting spell lands on you, or use it on cooldown when there is little burst.

Control

Fear: This is your main Crowd Control spell. You can use Fear in many ways, namely: preventing an enemy from attacking you or your teammates, prevent an enemy from healing himself or his teammates, bring an enemy out of position, etc..

Banish: Use this to prevent Demon or Elemental pets from acting. Banished Demons and Elementals are invulnerable to both damage and healing and cannot take orders from their master.

Curses

Curse of Enfeeblement: This is your main curse, just for the same reason PvP Resilience is better than PvP Power, is greater damage reduction better than a little damage buff. Not only that, it is also more beneficial for your team that your enemy will deal less damage and will cast/heal slower than having a little increase in magic damage done.

Health Funnel: Channel this if you know it will prevent your pet of dying. It is often better to resummon a pet in most cases than spending to much time on healing it. However, if you have the glyphed version, use it whenever your pet requires healing.

Demonic Circle: Teleport1: Teleport to your Demonic Circle when you want to create a gap between you and your target, to go to a safer spot, to move out Line of Sight of someone, to break snares or roots, etc. Demonic Circle: Teleport can be used regardless of your Demonic Circle being in Line of Sight.

Demonic Gateway2: Places 2 Demonic Gateways, one at your current location and one at a chosen location. Anyone in your group can use the Demonic Gateways to teleport from one to another. The Demonic Gateways are best placed in such a way you can easily move to a safer location, for example, from one pillar to another.

XII. Pets

As a warlock, you are a Summoner of Demons. Knowing what each Demon is capable of is one of the things you have to learn.
Note: The ability you get when using Grimoire of Sacrifice is underlined.

When to use
Use the imp when you are in great need of an extra defensive dispel. Normally you don't need that extra dispel and you'll never use him due how fragile he is.

Felhunter / Observer

Abilities

Spell Lock: Silences your target for 3 seconds. If the target is casting a spell, it will interrupt them and lock the school of the spell he was casting for 6 seconds. Use this to either prevent an important spell, or to interrupt it.

Devour Magic: Dispels a beneficial buff on the target, giving 60 energy and healing for a little. You can either leave this on auto-cast for maximum damage and having an easier time, or control it manually to dispel buffs quicker at the loss of some damage.

Seduction: Your Succubus will seduce your enemy, preventing them from acting. You can either leave this on auto-cast to make your Succubus seduce enemies that stun, silence or feared you, or manually cast it on the target of your desire.

Lash of Pain: Your Succubus her basic attack, just leave on auto-cast.

When to use
Use the Succubus when you lack a partner that can help you with crowd control (random battlegrounds), or when you have little need for a silence and you abuse Whiplash.

Voidwalker / Voidlord

Abilities

Shadow Bulwark: Grants the Voidwalker 30% of it's maximum health for 20 seconds. Keep this on auto-cast, but activate it manually if your Voidwalker is being attacked.

Shadow Shield: Reduced the damage your Voidwalker takes from physical damage by 60%. Each time the Voidwalker is hit, the shield deals some Shadow damage and its power is reduced with 20%. Just leave this on auto-cast.

Torment: Your Voidwalker's basic attack, just leave this on auto-cast.

Description: This macro will let you control your grimoire of service's felhunter silence. By using it, the additional felhunter that you summon will target your focus and spell lock him instead of your main target.

Description: What this macro will do is cast banish on your mouseover if you have one, otherwise it will banish your main target. Great in arenas seeing as you can banish elementals/demons without having to target them.

When you talk about stat priority for Destro you´re already considering the "XI. Pets" topic or you´re gonna make some changes when you get there? Cause all I hear about is "go with pet + haste in 5.2" lol

You'll see how it turns out.
There will be changes, but as for the pet topic, it will mainly go about what each pet has to offer, which pet you want to use in a situation and what to watch out for when using pets.

Very very nice, I really appreciate your determination. To show that, I'll wait a bit before discussing some stuff in a friendly way, seeing as you must have worked hard and taken a good chunk of your time and real-life matters to tailor this guide. What I think makes it great though is its straight to the point synthetic statements, which makes it easy for any newcomer to just grab whatever information he'd like to know without missing any important stuff.

I would definitely like an overview of casting priority when it comes to pvp. something i've personally struggled with (newbie warlock here). not sure if im supposed to just spam chaos bolt when i can or should be using more incinerates as i can.

I have been playing destro and only destro PvP on my lock over the past 6 years and I can confirm that your analysis and recommendations are sensible. I don't do any PvE or any other PvP spec so I can't say anything about the other 2 specs. I like your description of the talents, it is exactly how I look at them and I was happy to get a confirmation by a fellow PvPer.

I would really suggest staying away from the word required, up to you though. An example is the healthstone glyph for affliction, while it's an awesome glyph I wouldn't say it's required. I think just having your personal suggestions after the explanations of pro/cons would be a better way to go.

Originally Posted by Niberion

Tier 4[U]Unbound Will/U]Pro

Functions as a PvP trinket and doesn't share cooldown with the PvP trinket

Removes all harmful magical effects on you

Low cooldown of 1 minute

Con

Costs 20% of your maximum health.

Add in: Use caution when using unbound will as it will trigger dispel protection. This is not like a normal trinket, it will also clear other magics, not only CC. Unstable Affliction, Vampiric Touch.. Using unbound will with a UA on you will most likely hurt you more than it helps - 20% spell cost, UA crit + silence.

Originally Posted by Niberion

Tier 5

Grimoire of SacrificePro

You don't need to manage a pet, instead you gain a passive damage buff to your single target spells which also increases your cleave potential.

You gain 2% of your maximum health per 5 seconds.

You gain 20% extra health (only if talented into Soul Link).

CON

Only access to 1 pet ability.

Unable to use pet abilities while crowd controlled nor being able to deal damage aside from damage over time effects.

The damage buff does not include Damage over Time effects.

Reduced demonic fury due the lack of a pet.(Demonology only)

One big suggestion for sac. Don't always sac your pet instantly.. Your pet's cc and your saced command demon spell do not share CD. This means you can spell lock, sac, and spell lock again immediately. This added utility is one of the reasons I love GoSac.

I know you will get to it in more detail but what is the best pet to use for Affliction?

This will depend on a lot of different scenarios, it's really up to you to chose the best pet for the situation. In cata it was a little more clear, but changes have opened up more options.

Your talents, opponents, map etc can all help in deciding.
I personally play affliction with GoSac, My favorite pet to use it the fel hunter for the (2x) spell lock. Sometimes I will choose another pet if the enemy team or map calls for it. Whiplash can help out on z-axis arena maps, or somewhere like LM in AB. Maybe the other team has no casters so spell lock won't help out much and a disarm would be more helpful.

Just learn what the pets can do and the different situations you can use them in, and use your best judgement.